Victorian Home Life 

Pre-workshop Information 

 

Session Outline 

 

This session allows pupils to explore the theme of Victorian domestic life using the familiar 
task of doing the laundry. Pupils will help a member of Museum staff as they try and do the 
laundry in the style of a Victorian laundry maid, using real and replica items from the 
Museums collection. They will use their prior knowledge, investigative skills and 
imaginations to complete the task, whilst at the same time exploring the differences 
between home life then and now and developing their understanding of the past. 

 

Pupils will participate in an interactive question and answer session before taking on the 
role of a Victorian laundry maid themselves. In small groups they will use washboards, 
carbolic soap, possers and flat irons to do their own pile of laundry. Finally, pupils will have 
the opportunity to discuss how domestic life has changed over time, and consider how and 
why these changes have occurred. 

 

Session Duration: 1 hour 

 

 

Curriculum Links 

 

This session supports the following areas of the KS1 National Curriculum: 

 

- identifying differences between ways of life at different times 
- finding out about the past from a range of sources of information 
- asking and answering questions about the past using subject-specific vocabulary 


It also links to QCA units: 

 

- How were homes long ago different from homes today? 
- What would we find inside people's homes a long time ago? 
- What can we find out about Victorian times from looking at household objects? 


 

 

Learning Objectives 

 

The session will provide children with opportunities to: 

 

- find out more about domestic life in the Victorian era using handling artefacts 
- communicate what they know about the Victorian era and homes from the past 
- develop their understanding of the passing of time and use associated vocabulary 
- participate individually and in small groups 


 

 


 

What We Expect 

 

- Children will think about their own lives and make comparisons with people living in 
different times and places. 
- Children will enjoy learning in an interactive way using objects and costume. 
- Whilst Museum staff will run the session, support in the classroom is required in 
order to minimise the risks involved with the session items, enforce the schools 
behaviour policy and ensure artefacts are handled appropriately. 
- Your institution will reimburse the museum for the cost of any item/items that need 
to be replaced due to loss/theft/breakage (through inappropriate behaviour) during 
the programme. 
- If you have booked an outreach session please see the outreach conditions email for 
additional requirements. 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Victorian Home Life 

Pre-workshop Information 

 

Information for Teachers 

 

The Victorian age saw Wandsworth transformed from a mainly rural collection of villages 
outside London to part of the city's suburbs. New transport links were created, industries 
sprang up, institutions were founded and the population of Wandsworth greatly increased. 
The shape of Wandsworth as we know it today was largely created by the Victorians. 

 

Keeping clothes clean has been an essential concern for thousands of years. However, the 
modern electric washing machine we are all familiar with did not come into existence until 
the 1900s. Until the development of the washing machine, hand-washing clothing was an 
extremely laborious process; it might take three days to wash and rinse the clothes in a 
large Victorian household, and two more to mangle, starch and iron them. The life of a 
laundry maid would have been extremely tough by modern standards. Servants were early 
to rise and late getting to bed, and time off from work was a rare luxury. By the 1880s, 
servants were given a half-day off on Sundays, starting after lunch. Scrubbing linen with 
harsh carbolic soap would have left hands sore and chapped. 

 

Few women were employed solely as laundry maids  to afford to employ a servant for a 
single task required a lot of money. Despite this fact, laundry maids did not enjoy high status 
amongst domestic servants. On average, laundry maids earned only 13 per year for what 
would have been very physically demanding work. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Victorian Home Life 

Pre-workshop Information 

 

Pre-visit Ideas for Activities 

 

1. Discuss the different ways we keep our clothes and our homes clean. Ask the children 
what kinds of objects we use around the home, and think about how these might have been 
different in the past e.g. before electricity, running water. Using Worksheet 1, ask the 
children to match the modern and old domestic objects according to their function. 

 

2. Ask the children to imagine what it would be like to work in a large Victorian household. 
Discuss having to get up very early in the morning, not earning much money or having much 
holiday, and the different jobs that would need to be done e.g. lighting the fires, heating the 
water, preparing food etc. How might it feel to be a Victorian laundry maid? Children can 
write a short story or poem based on your discussion. 

 

3. Think about the differences between rich and poor people living in the Victorian era, and 
lives of rich and poor children in particular. What might their homes look like? What kind of 
clothes might they have worn? What toys did they play with? Did they go to school or work? 
Ask the children to make a list of the differences between rich and poor Victorians. 

 

4. Ask the children to interview their family members about how clothes were washed in 
their homes when they were young. Encourage them to ask family members of different 
generations, and discuss how the laundry process has changed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Worksheet 1. Match the old and new cleaning items! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Victorian Home Life 

Post-workshop Resources 

 

We very much hope you enjoyed your Victorian Home Life workshop and we would be very 
grateful to hear your views on this or other elements of the Museums learning programme. 
If you have any comments or concerns that have not been addressed in our evaluation, 
please contact us at bookings@wandsworthmuseum.co.uk. 

 

The following resources are designed to support you and your pupils after participation in 
the Victorian Home Life workshop. Below you will find more details about some of the 
objects featured in the session. 

 

Please note: If you have not yet participated in the workshop, please do not reveal the 
content to the participants as this will lessen the impact of the workshop. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Laundry Maids Uniform 

 

Most Victorian maids wore a white pinafore over a 
long black uniform dress with sturdy boots. This 
uniform was mostly worn when maids were on 
show to the members of the household and their 
guests. For the hard work done behind the scenes, 
a simpler form of this dress would have been worn. 
White caps were worn to keep hair out of the face. 
Maids were usually expected to buy their own 
uniforms when they started work, which might 
have cost them between 4 and 5  over a third of 
their yearly salary. 

 

Tin Bath 

 

Tin baths like this one were used to hold 
the laundry and soapy water. It would have 
been difficult to keep water hot in these 
metal tubs, meaning that large quantities of 
water would need to be heated throughout 
the day. As well as being used for laundry, 
many Victorian people bathed themselves 
in tin baths, crouching down or standing in 
the tub and scrubbing themselves clean. 

 

Coal 

 

The Industrial Revolution led to the large-scale use 
of coal for energy  it became vital to nearly every 
Victorian household, as well as to industry and 
transport. In the home it was used to make fires for 
heating and lighting. Coal-fired stoves and copper 
boilers were used to heat water and flat irons for 
doing the laundry. 

 

 

 

 

Short-handled Posser 

 

Possers were used to pound laundry and remove dirt from clothes. 
Some had a wooden cross-piece used to make a twisting motion. 
The underside of the copper dome was concave and had holes in it 
to create suction, making the job of the maid slightly easier. 
Nonetheless, using the posser would have been hard work. 


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Washboard 

 

Washboards consisted of a wooden frame with a sheet of 
corrugated iron or glass set inside. The washboard would 
be placed inside the tin bath and clothes would be 
scrubbed against the ribbed surface, encouraging the 
removal of stains. Like using the posser, this would have 
been physically demanding work. 

 

 

 

 

 

Carbolic Soap 

 

Carbolic soap was the first anti-sceptic widely 
produced, and was a staple in most Victorian 
household. It contained a mixture of soap 
and carbolic acid, and was bought in huge 
slabs before being cut down to make 
individual bars. It was used to clean clothes, 
chamber pots and a variety of other things 
around the home, and many people washed 
their bodies with it as well. 

 

 

Flat Iron 

 

Before electricity, irons like this were heated 
on an open fire or range. Because they would 
cool so quickly whilst being worked over the 
linen, it was common to use two, one being 
heated up while one was being used. The 
handle being metal, it would have had to have 
been picked up using a cloth of some kind. Flat 
irons were quite heavy, and would have 
required a strong arm. 

 

 

 

 

 


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Victorian Home Life 

Post-workshop Resources 

 

Post-visit Activities 

 

1. Ask the children if they can remember the different steps involved in doing the laundry 
like a Victorian maid. Write them down on a whiteboard or flip chart and put them in the 
correct order as a class. 

 

2. Write a short diary entry as a Victorian laundry maid. Encourage the children to write 
about the jobs the maid would have done, the clothes she wore, what her life might have 
been like and how she might have felt about it. 

 

3. Think about how laundry and other household equipment has changed since the 
Victorian era. Design a futuristic washing/cleaning device, thinking about how to make the 
task of doing the laundry even easier. 

 

 


